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July 18, 2006

What this is about

The government of my country does what governments find so easy: ban, block, censor (choose your favourite word). Among other Web domains, blogspot.com is currently invisible in India. Though of course, given that this is the Web, "invisible" is only in a manner of speaking: there are innumerable ways around this block. Trust a government to be oblivious to that.

There's a groundswell of anger as people gear up to fight this. It's been in the news and it will be again.

And it strikes me that this fight is not about finding the ways around ("proxies"), nor about simply getting blogspot unblocked. This should be aimed at nothing less than ensuring the government will never again do something like this. There should be no site or group of sites that they will ever again be able to block; in fact, there should be no book they will ban, no infringement on freedoms at all ever again. That's what this is about.

Part of that involves putting together workarounds for bans like these and making them public.

Part involves finding out how this decision was taken -- maybe by whom too -- so we can work out how to stop it ever being taken again. The silver lining there is that we now have a tool -- the Right to Information Act -- to do just that.

And part involves putting in place the laws and mechanisms that will prevent such a thing from happening in the future.

Long battle. Bring it on. I'm actually glad this bizarre block happened. For it opens our eyes to the way the government works and forces us to find ways to make it accountable to us. Sometimes you need something bizarre to happen, it's the kick in the behind that makes us fight for things we otherwise take for granted.

35 comments:

I understand completely where you are coming from...This poem was inspired by reports of this to me.I invite you to explore 'Ancient's History'."I don't think I now...I just know I'm thinking."your humble servant,Ancient Clown

Here we see the ugly instincts of the Left-wing Congress-Communist alliance to ban "subversive" sites like www.hinduhumanrights.org

That site has nothing on it that attacks Islam. It does however talk about attrocities committed against Hindus, and it also criticizes the Congress Party.

Dilip is of course totally ignoring the particular singling out of innocent Hindu websites, and merely chooses to cover up the specific focus of attack with a bland expression of displeasure.

It shows Dilip's lack of credibility.

Contrary to his slogan, D'Souza is indeed a Leftist and not a Rightist -- and even worse, he's a liar for not being open and forthright about it. There are Left-wingers who are very candid about their Leftism, but not D'Souza, he likes to camouflage himself, hoping it'll give him credibility which he knows he doesn't deserve.

D'Souza, why don't you acknowledge that the ban was targetted at Hindus?

It's the elephant in the room that you refuse to identify. Let's call a spade a spade.

Any activism by Hindus for human rights purposes as automatically branded as some kind of fascist fundamentalism by our Left-wing half-wits. And this is why the govt has taken license to ban those particular sites.

The govt ban is about their own self-interest in thwarting rival political parties, and not about protecting social stability.

D'Souza, you're definitely a left-winger. Proclamations of neutrality from you are like proclamations by N.Korea that it's a "People's Democratic" Republic.

barbarindian: exactly, D'Souza has a clever-by-half way of shifting the lines of comparison, in order to suit his biases. ("not a leftist" - my foot!)

If BJP had done this, then our Dilip "mr neutral" D'Souza would have been crowing about it from the rooftops as the "Hindu fascism". But when it's the left-wing Congress coalition doing it, then it's just a "generally unfortunate decision by India".

Dilip, why don't you respond once in awhile? We all know you're a moral coward, who doesn't have a strong enough conviction in his own beliefs to stand up for them.

why doesn't dilip respond?because he is a moral coward? no. because the best way to treat slander is to ignore it. it takes guts to go out and say what he believes in even if it is going to attract trolls like you (san) and barbarindian. all the more creditable because he does so under his own name.

that said, san, why do you say that the ban is expressly targeted at the hindus? have you seen princess kimberly? i am damned if i know why the state has singled that out. but the girl running it is a christian. and it bangs on about how jesus adds structure to her life.

It would be erroneous to draw conclusion from one instance, and convert a 'right to information/expression issue' into commie/leftist, UPA vs. NDA etc. rant.

This is not the first time GOI has done this kind of clumsy thing. Last time was in Sept 2003, when the GOI (that was NDA govt then,incidentally) had asked the ISPs to block a particular yahoogroup - Kynhum (because, it used to voice opinions about mining in ecologically sensitive areas, of corruption of the Meghalaya government)... then also, the ISPs had ended up blocking the entire yahoogoups site - the ban lasted 2 weeks.

If one looks at the timeline of acts/laws/orders that allow the government to do this, it cuts across the the left-right governments, and the ideological biases that you mention.

The Informtation Technology Act was passed in 2000. The Cert-in was formed in Feb 2003 as a part of the IT Act. The GSR529(E) order was passed in July 2003, that gives Cert-in the power to "take on the spot decision on whether the website is to be blocked or not" !!!

That's the power Cert-in used in Sept 2003 and is using now.

What is of concern is that (1) the mandarins who are supposed to be implementing the rules in their wisdom (much to question about the "wisdom";0), have no clue about the nature of internet, and (2) many netizens have no idea about these simple facts, and therefore tend to reduce/hijack the debate to their prefered ideological rantings.

Madhukar, you just inundated us with a bunch of footnotes as mere filler-material. Do you feel this makes you sound more academic? You can always spot the leftists by the quality of their arguments -- or rather, the lack of them.

The fact is that the Congress govt has blocked a bunch of websites which it seems to associate with rival political parties. (ie. Hindus, Dalits)

So please don't pretend to take some neutral objective stance on this. You're basically defending their blocking action. Even D'Souza doesn't do that, although he's deliberately downplaying the fact that it was aimed at Hindu groups. It's not like everybody was equally affected -- only critics of Congress.

dear san,how nice. neither of us believes in god. how similarly we think.

and now, why anonymity? zimble. i want to spare you the temptation of lobbing personal attacks at me.

your comments on gujarat are fascinating. you are certainly taking the path less trodden. not a premeditated assault but a simple riot, eh. i think i should understand the position you are arguing from before making up my mind about you.

and so, pls let me know why you think the riots are not premeditated. the nhrc concluded that they were. were they wrong? were they deliberately lying? why would it do so? is it -- shock, horror -- lefties as well? if so, would it be as leftist as dilip, even more leftist, or less leftist. that would be nice to know as well. :-)

also, what makes you so certain about the death toll? the official is 950 (hindu and muslim). there have been lots of reports saying that a lot of complainants were driven away by the cops, that a lot of deaths were never noted. this was accompanied by another accusation that the cops themselves were deeply complicit in the riots. would you say these were all lies? and why would you be so willing to believe what the state says in this context?

given your answer, i also feel compelled to canvass your views on narendra modi. let me know about that as well.

Dilip, these idiots don't seem to have realised that banning something just draws attention to it. Moreover, the ISPs are idiots for thinking they can just block all of blogspot and nobody will notice. At my workplace we have sent a strong complaint to our ISP (blogs aren't totally useless for work, you know...) At home, strangely enough, I never had a problem accessing blogspot (my provider is Sify).

san, barbarindian, and various anonymous creatures -- why the heck do you bother reading Dilip, when (a) you hate his guts and (b) you never have anything to say beyond an unsubstantiated and, in this case, irrelevant "Dilip hates Hindus" whine? Why don't you stay home at your rightwing blogs?

Ok, everybody is an idiot but the Government is intelligent for ordering the ban when it basically does not work. Oh I forgot, the Government is this mysterious entity which has no connection with a certain political party whatsoever.

barbarindian,the points that reality check raises are all superbly valid. it is eminently worthy of investigation to check india's fuckwit govt blocked any of these blogs -- even the hindu ones. from what i have seen, should not have been. at a first glance, it is nothing but the usual loony fringe sabre-rattling (the "russian archbishop slanders krishna" school of demagoguery)

basically. how did the morons identify the blogs to be canned? and b, why shut them down? if you think terrorists are using them. it surely makes more sense to monitor them.

those are the questions to be raised. when guys like you and san go rampaging, attributing all sorts of hindoo hatred to dilip, mocking him, it is these questions that you end up obscuring. in fact, come to think of it, maybe we should all accuse you of working for the congress -- and trying to divert attention from the main issue.

basically, this is a serious time. if you have anything valid to add to the debate, welcome. otherwise, forgive us for ignoring you increasingly.

dear san,point taken. cannot ask you to muzzle your opinions. unforgivable to even think like that. but we can certainly ask you to substantiate what you say.

and so, i direct you again to my comment. you say that the gujarat riots were not premeditated. that the gujarat police did not withdraw, leaving the streets free for the rioters. it flies in the face of everything i have heard and read about the riots. and so, having exercised your right to free speech, pls substantiate.

also. to help me understand where you are coming from, do let me know what you think of narendra mode. specifically, his conduct in the context of the riots.

barbarindian,my apologies for sounding harsh. i suspect we agree on quite a lot. the congress (and this government) is crap as far as its adherence to democracy continues. it cannot go about banning sites just because they say something unflattering about sonia gandhi.

i am waiting to see what the rti campaigns reveal. it should be an insight into how this toadying government thinks and acts.

this is why i feel bearish about india. at one end, a crazy party like the bjp. at the other, a bunch of toadies like the congress. how does one choose?

Dilip: I am sorry if I sound agitated. I have had to do this over several such blog sites, greatbong, dinamehta, exposingtheleft... & now yours.

the govt has *NOT* banned general blogs. Like any reasonable govt that wants to curtails right of hate-inciting sites to reach the masses, the GOI sought to ban n sites. The ISPs goofed up in implementing that. They are now fixing this, and what seemed like a blanket ban, will be gone.

I wonder how so many of you guys can get such simple facts wrong. You guys are spreading what is factually wrong. Thts sad.

dear rc,you are right. but see it like this. i live in delhi. in the last elections, smarting from the gujarat riots, i was pretty clear that i would not be voting for the bjp. and then, i discover that my congress ummedwar is none other than 1984 accused sajjan kumar. how do i decide whom to vote for?

i finally voted, damn unwillingly, for the cong. because to vote for anyone else would be to waste my vote. next time around, i am seriously tempted to exercise the 49 O option. if only to register my protest saying that none of the guys are good enough.

there is another huge problem with voting for the cong. the morons inevitably interpret the vote as a statement of confidence in the gandhi family. and the thought that my vote might be interpreted by the idiots as a public vote for rahul gandhi or someone is distressing. it emphatically is not.

Dilip: The govt is doing its job in curtailing the rights of hate inciting sites. As we have seen in the past, acts of terror are followed by immensely sensitive stages, where volatile minds can get instigated to instigate that 1 incident that spirals into a riot.The readers of these blogs arent going to be the rioteers..hell no, they are -typically- well-read enough to not do that, but what most could potentially end up doing is funding these "interested parties" that then go arrange a mob on the street.

We have had enough bloodshed on these lines already. Like any sensible govt, GOI has done its job in banning these sites.

I have asked this elsewhere, but would you be willing to stick your neck on the line for these sites? vouch for them that they will not lead to anything that we as a nation wont regret?????

[quote] Gulshan Rai, director of the Ministry of Communication'sIndian Computer Emergency Response Team, said that the ban was not a response to the attack and that sites were targeted because ``theblogs are pitting Muslim against non-Muslim,'' Reuters reported.[unquote]http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/15080708.htm

Dilip's role in this pitting of non Muslims versus Muslims should be duly noted. Since dcubed too was banned, he must have been pitting muslims against non-muslims.

san? where are you, san? has anybody seen san? he was last heard declaiming on this page that the gujarat riots were not premeditated. that the cops did their utmost to stem the violence, and so on.i am still waiting for him to educate me about the real reasons why gujarat combusted after godhra.worried,anon 1118